Are they really friends when they reply all?

If you're like me, you get a lot of chain emails sent by people you consider friends, or used to. Some of the chains coming in are just jokes. Most of them are funny, breaking up the day. I usually like getting them because the rest of what I read is usually very heartbreaking.

I get chain emails from Democrats and Republicans. People I have socialized with. People I have tried to help with spiritual issues.

Normally I would call most of them friends, until I get these chain emails. I've talked this issue to death on a couple of rants I've done. They are hurtful and that's the point.

Have you ever read in any of these emails something you read on my blog or from the news?

Most of the people with my email address linked into their chains are supposed to be concerned with the troops and veterans, yet I never see any of the subjects that really matter to what they are going thru in any of their "important" emails they feel they need to share with the world.

I was horrified when I read the news yesterday that in Los Angeles alone there are 15,000 homeless veterans. Did you get a chain on that one? I didn't. No one passed on a chain about any of the suicides of our troops or veterans. No one passed on the chains about PTSD or about the Navy Cross being awarded to a young Marine from 29 Palms. No one is passing on the fact that this is the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan and is on track to being the deadliest year ever for all the forces there.

I could find twenty stories that are really important during one day alone, yet the next day's chain emails flooding my mail will not have a single one among them.

I was on the NAMI Veterans Council. One of the reason aside from the award to Dr. Katz, was the fact that with all the chain emails coming from them, it would take weeks before I saw anything that was already covered on my blog. Some of these reports were huge but the people on the council didn't seem to notice or value the importance of the news report.

Take a look at your chain emails coming into you from your "friends" and then look at the headlines you know about. Do any of your "friends" bother to send any of them to you or are they all political, one side against the other? Are any of them valuable? Helpful? Supportive? Do they really contribute anything to any of the issues this country is really facing? Or do they seem to want to just get your blood boiling?

If your "friends" never seem to bother to send you anything really worthy of where your heart is, then you need to ask yourself if they are really your friends or not. You could find whatever they have to say off of any website, but do you know what they really feel or believe in? Do they share anything about themselves?

You may know about homeless veterans and the real fact behind how they got that way, but do you end up with chain emails denying they exist or are homeless because it's their own fault? What do you do with that email? Simply delete it? Or do you try to inform your friends? If not, then why not? Are you afraid you won't get emails from them anymore or they won't like you anymore? Why would you care when they don't share your values in the first place?

You may know about a veteran accused of committing a crime and read what was behind it, but when you get an email about it, leaving you to shake your head over the spin on it, making you sick to your stomach, instead of getting into an argument, you just ignore it. The problem with just ignoring it is that it is allowed to be passed on as if it is the truth.

That's one of the biggest problems in this country right now. There are huge issues you may care about but you do nothing about them. You don't have to have a blog anyone can read. Most of you are very busy in your own lives but you do get emails. Look up at the number of people in the chain at the top of the email and then think if you have something to say in response to the email. If you reply all, it goes to all of them and some may agree with you, pass that on to their group in bulk and then on and on it goes.

What if you could change someone's mind today or get them to think of something in a different way? Do you ever think of how powerful the Internet is? If reasonable, responsible people speak up and tell the truth, maybe, just maybe this country will change and things that used to matter will get the attention they deserve once more. Let's get politics out of the way by doing something about it instead of just ignoring them. If the sender does not seem to agree with what you feel inside, they are not your friend anyway so you have nothing really to lose by speaking your own mind.